Exposure Read Online Free Page B

child. Praying that she would not turn a corner into the arms of the Ratcatchers and have to become older. To have to stare the bastards in the eye and stick her chest out and say, “Yeah, I’m nearly seventeen, and these are the only clothes I got, so what?”
    Bianca was crazy. Bianca was younger, at least a year younger, but thought she could pass for sixteen because she was beautiful. Which she was. Wild hair like her brother’s, but full of light. Blue, sometimes. The same big eyes that could melt you and make you foolish. She asked for nothing: she stole. Denied it, of course. Bush told her time after time, “Beg, scrounge, but never steal. They’ll get you if you steal.” And then Bianca had come back with a white bra and a pair of panties. Told Bush she’d found them on a piece of cardboard the shape of a body without arms and legs thrown into a yard behind a shop on Santa Josefina. And he’d believed her. So now she went out with them on, the bra hoicking her chest up, a lacy strap showing beneath the one black T-shirt she owned. Practically asking to be taken among the trash cans in some dirty dark alley and —
    Where are you, Bianca? Come back to the shed alive and let’s light a candle. Fidel has left food for us.
    Bush was leaving the subway at San Antonio, the stop for the Triangle. He’d stood inconspicuously by the single door at the end of the car, hiding the bucket behind his legs. He came out from underground, unchallenged, into a bustling street separated from the sky by scrawls of neon. On Trinidad he did what he always did: walked past the wrecked house, past the bar, and leaned against a wall until the street seemed safe. Then he went swiftly through the dark hole of the old doorway and picked his way across the yard. There was no light showing through the rickety walls of the shed, and he did not know whether that was a good or a bad thing.
    “Bianca? Felicia?”
    The door was dragged back on its lopsided hinges just before he reached it.
    “Bush?”
    “Yeah, it’s me. It’s cool.”
    He was close to her in the almost dark, and she wanted more than anything to take hold of him and for him to say her name again.
    He said, “Where’s Bianca?”
    “Hey, Bush. You okay? How was it today?”
    “Kinda rough. Where’s Bianca?”
    “I dunno.”
    “Aw, man. What you mean, you dunno? Shit, Felicia.”
    “I fell asleep. When I woke up, she was gone. I’m real sorry, Bush. I thought she was asleep an’ all.”
    She felt him move past her, then heard him rustling in the bag. The flash of a lighter. His face came back toward her, up-lit by the stub of candle in his hand.
    Hurriedly she said, “You hungry? Fidel left us food. Rice ’n’ beans with some sausage in it. I been keepin’ it. I haven’t had any of it.”
    “How long you think she been gone?”
    Felicia shrugged, and instantly regretted it. Bush’s eyes narrowed into slits of reflected flame.
    “Can’t’ve been more’n two hours, Bush. I woke up ’bout an hour back, an’ I wasn’ asleep that long.”
    He hung his head. His face was hidden from her by the draggled mop of his hair.
    She said, “You look real tired, man. C’mon, have some food. Sit. Hey, I got most a big Pepsi I found at the bus stop. Wan’ some?”
    “I’m gonna have to go look for her. Jesus, Felicia. I don’ need this, you know?”
    She knew. And she could no longer stand so close to him with the distance between them feeling so huge. She went and sat on the bed.
    He said, “What you do today? You go for breakfast down at the Sisters of Mercy?”
    “Yeah. We got soup an’ bread an’ —”
    “Felicia, I don’ give a shit what you ate. You see anyone down there? Like that Hernandez Brothers gang?”
    “They was there, yeah.”
    “Bianca talk to them?”
    “Maybe.”
    “Maybe?”
    This was the conversation she feared and hated, that was like a bad dream you shook off and then it came back. The one they had all the time instead of the one